Including Cardio In Your Routine
Probably the finest balancing act you will have to negotiate when trying to maximize your muscle gains is the inclusion of cardio in your training regime. While excessive cardiovascular activity can seriously negate many hours of diligent training through the degrading of muscle tissue (all cardio can potentially negatively impact muscle gains, however negligible this impact may be), adequate aerobic work can produce beneficial results in recovery and lean muscle gains if structured properly.
Cardio holds many major benefits for people who wish to build a lean physique and there are very rare circumstances in which you should avoid it completely. Cardio is very important for increasing the rate at which blood is pumped throughout the body which aids recovery by circulating valuable nutrients for energy and building purposes.
Determining exactly how much cardio you should include in your program depends mostly on your particular body type and how much it affects your ability to keep lean muscle mass, and the only way to know precisely how much is too much is through trial and error.
For most, cardio can consist of three 45 minutes sessions per week as a solid starting point. After several weeks on this plan, assess your progress to determine whether your lean muscle has increased and body fat has declined.
If so, continue with this scheduling or increase cardio by one 45-minute session per week for further gains. Those of you who consider yourself an ectomorph - the so-called hard gainers who have to fight for every ounce of muscle - can probably get by on as little as one to two cardio sessions per week.
Again, you must monitor their progress to see if more or less is needed over the long term. The endomorphic among us - those with a greater predisposition for being overweight and displaying a rounder body shape - will probably need to complete three 45-minute sessions per week minimum. A great way to maximize both the recovery benefits for building muscle and the calorie burning properties of cardio, incorporating cardioacceleration 2 to 3 training sessions per week may be the way to go, especially if you are short on time, or dread the thought of a long duration of steady-state cardio.
Cardio holds many major benefits for people who wish to build a lean physique and there are very rare circumstances in which you should avoid it completely. Cardio is very important for increasing the rate at which blood is pumped throughout the body which aids recovery by circulating valuable nutrients for energy and building purposes.
Determining exactly how much cardio you should include in your program depends mostly on your particular body type and how much it affects your ability to keep lean muscle mass, and the only way to know precisely how much is too much is through trial and error.
For most, cardio can consist of three 45 minutes sessions per week as a solid starting point. After several weeks on this plan, assess your progress to determine whether your lean muscle has increased and body fat has declined.
If so, continue with this scheduling or increase cardio by one 45-minute session per week for further gains. Those of you who consider yourself an ectomorph - the so-called hard gainers who have to fight for every ounce of muscle - can probably get by on as little as one to two cardio sessions per week.
Again, you must monitor their progress to see if more or less is needed over the long term. The endomorphic among us - those with a greater predisposition for being overweight and displaying a rounder body shape - will probably need to complete three 45-minute sessions per week minimum. A great way to maximize both the recovery benefits for building muscle and the calorie burning properties of cardio, incorporating cardioacceleration 2 to 3 training sessions per week may be the way to go, especially if you are short on time, or dread the thought of a long duration of steady-state cardio.